Collections History

There are no many schools of science, established at Kazan University when it was founded, that have being successfully developed up till now. One of them is Botany, which is connected with the name of K.K.Fuks, the first professor of Natural Sciences and Botany, who began working at the University in 1805.

At the Meeting of the University Council in December 1805 Fuks proposed a plan of teaching Natural Science in Latin according to Blumenbach, one of the professors, who taught Fuks in Hettingen. In 1805-1806 his lectures on Natural Science attended 13 students.

Fuks was an outstanding collector and managed to make his young disciples inherit this passion. Samples, gathered during excursions and systematized according to Blumenbach, were used at practical classes and exams.

"Having noticed that schools of Kazan Educational Region do not have classical textbooks on Botany, the nicest field of Natural Science, I intend to publish works on Russian flora implying all growing wild herbs of the Russian Empire, which I collected and examined, to be used in the schools mentioned above...", - wrote Karl Fyodorovich in his application to the University Council.

Unfortunately, there is no information about the petition as well as the majority of herbarium collections, which must have been a basis for "Russian Flora" edition.

Karl Fuks's disciple V.I.Timyansky succeeded to him at the Department of Natural Science and Botany. The first samples of dried up plants appeared in the Natural Science Study Room of Kazan University at that time. Some of them, dated the years of 1815-1817, are kept in the University Herbarium even now.

The botanic collection of the Natural Science Laboratory was enriched after Timyansky had left Kazan University. One should mention a big collection of world flora samples bought from abbot Grandidier in 1824. During this period of time Nikolay I. Lobachevsky and Eduard I. Eikhvald headed the Natural Science Laboratory.